In residential and commercial alarm systems typically report events (including alarms) use a land-line phone connection to the central station. In traditional installations, the event data is sent through a combination of tones and data over the phone line to a DACR (digital alarm communication receiver) located at the central station. Recently, alarm panels have begun to provide voice communication capabilities, whereby at the end of the event transmission, the alarm panel signals the DACR that it will not disconnect, and the DACR should connect the incoming telephony path to an attendant. At this point, the attendant, via DTMF commands, can establish a one-way or two-way voice path with the alarm panel. This feature has proven to be very useful for alarm verification, as well as for use in PERS (Personal Emergency Response System) installations. However, it does present difficulties for dial capture cellular alarm communicators.
Dial capture cellular alarm communicators allow an alarm panel to communicate with a central station in locations where no telephone connection is present, or where a backup to the existing telephone line is desired or required. Dial capture communicators typically function by “capturing” the tones and data sent by the alarm panel, converting these events to cellular data, and transmitting them to an alarm communication center. The alarm communication center then converts the data it has received from the communicator to tones and data on a telephone connection to the alarm receiver. Because of this conversion process, dial capture communicators are currently unable to provide a path for the voice communication.